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As a holy river miraculously returns, seven lives change course in this masterpiece debut by a rising literary star.
Centuries ago, the myths say, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Northern India. But when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother's funeral, he is astonished to find water in the long-dry well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river and build a gleaming new city on its banks, and Satnam—adrift from his job, girlfriend, and flat back in London—soon finds himself swept up in this ferment of Hindu nationalist pride.
As the river alters Satnam's course, so it reveals buried ties to six distant relatives scattered across the globe - from an ambitious writer with her eye on legacy to a Kenyan archaeologist to a Bollywood stunt double - who are brought together in a rapidly changing India. Brimming with love, lust, violence and loss, Gurnaik Johal's magisterial novel deftly animates the passions that bind us to our histories, our lands and each other.
"Johal's ambitious debut traces the sinuous paths of the seven siblings as history's sweeping tides displace descendants around the globe. Johal graphs an expansive arc of India across the centuries, including the cataclysmic partition of India and Pakistan, the rise of Hindu nationalism, and the wreckage wrought by environmental destruction. Focusing on the narrative forest over the trees will sweep the reader along in the story's earnest fervor." —Booklist
"An ambitious, panoramic portrait." ―The Guardian (UK)
"Saraswati is an extraordinary novel: gripping, funny, epic, elegant, and full of preternatural wisdom. Johal's greatest strength is his ability to show the world as inexhaustibly fascinating, a vast and wondrous meshwork of interlocking stories. Saraswati is a major achievement, and Johal a huge talent. This should be one of the biggest novels of the year." ―Martin MacInnes, Booker-longlisted author of In Ascension
"Immersive, erudite, intimate and epic, a weaving of lives and stories, old and new, into something vast and very special. Saraswati sounds a note of hope, and a warning for our future." ―Preti Taneja, award-winning author of We That Are Young
This information about Saraswati was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gurnaik Johal is a writer from West London. His 2022 collection We Move won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Tata Literature Live! Prize. Its opening story won the Galley Beggar Short Story Prize. Saraswati is his debut novel.
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